Against a Dark Background

Overview

Sharrow was once the leader of a personality-attuned combat team in one of the sporadic little commercial wars in the civilization based around the planet Golter. Now she is hunted by the Huhsz, a religious cult which believes that she is the last obstacle before the faith's apotheosis, and her only hope of escape is to find the last of the apocalyptically powerful Lazy Guns before the Huhsz find her.

Her journey through the exotic Golterian system is a destructive and savage odyssey into her past, and that of her family and of the system itself.

Editorial Reviews

On the run from a cult of intergalactic religious fanatics who want her death, the Lady Sharrow emerges from retirement to seek out a powerful artifact that may save her life--the legendary Lady Gun, a weapon that kills by altering the reality around it. The author of Consider Phlebas ( LJ 5/15/88) and The Player of Games ( LJ 2/15/89) has constructed a richly hued, far-future tapestry for his latest space adventure. Sophisticated prose, complex characters, and an unbridled imagination combine in this tale of high drama and intrigue. A good choice for most libraries.

Author Information

Bio of Iain M. Banks

Iain M. Banks has been acclaimed as the most imaginative British novelist of his generation. Born in Scotland in 1954, Banks pursued a variety of careers before turning to writing. The child of a naval officer and a former professional ice skater, he studied English at Stirling University while working as a construction worker and gardener, among other jobs. After taking a degree, he hitchhiked throughout Europe and Morocco before spending a year as a testing technician for British Steel. Over the late 1970's and early '80s, Banks visited the United States, worked for IBM in Scotland and moved to London to stay with friends while writing his first novel. Banks's first novel The Wasp Factory (1984), concerns a sixteen-year-old serial killer. Praised for its imagination, dialogue and black humor, it was selected in a British poll as one of the top 100 novels of the century. Banks followed it with Walking on Glass (1985), which examines three obsessed people who meet in a menagerie of conspiracy and torture. The Bridge (1986) is about a man, unconscious after an accident, who travels through a complex dream world and ultimately must choose whether to return to reality. Banks' other novels include Complicity (1995), which explores the themes of murder and revenge in the context of a thriller; and A Song of Stone (1997), about a pair of aristocrats in the aftermath of a European war. Among his science fiction novels are Against a Dark Background (1993), Feersum Endjinn (1994) and Excession (1996). 030

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Additional Info

Imprint

Orbit

Filesize

1.47 MB

Number of Pages

640

eBook ISBN

9780316075947